An Analysis of Climate Change Denial

Climate-change denial (CCD), the opposition to taking climate change seriously, could provide humanity with good quality critique of the CC arguments. Unfortunately, they have not assumed this role.

We want to be able to find out where the climate change models are weak and their assumptions are shaky. So I had hoped that the CCDrs would reveal some of these. Unfortunately, they don't. Instead - as far as I have been able to discover - they poke fun and sneer, they smear the CC arguments with unwarranted associations, they raise objections that are low in relevance, they focus on very specific points as though those points are the whole argument, they claim as facts things that are either opinions or even false, and they fail to take a broad view. Why do they do this?

This page is part if a 'new view' in theology, which takes the Bible seriously but not in a traditional fundamentalist nor liberal way. Some of the statements here will reflect this view, but most will be relevant to those who do not. This is a 'serious' look at CC denial; I also have a rather more lively, polemical version.

I have yet to find a CCDr (anti-climate change person) who provides good quality critique that helps me truly evaluate models and assumptions. The CCDrs sound plausible and even convincing, but if you analyse what they say, it does not stack up. This page shows the following examples:

• Christopher Booker against the Hockey Stick curve
• Nigel Lawson's book on global warming
• Roger Helmer's, Bruge Group Report

See what you think.

Comment

Would the climate change opposition be convinced if some absolutely massive piece of evidence for climate change came up? I doubt it. As the evidence mounts for climate change, for humanity's responsibility for it, and for the urgency of changing our lifestyles and aspirations, they do not become convinced. Instead, they work even harder to undermine each piece of evidence.

That, at least, is what I observe. It seems to me a spiritual issue, not a logical or scientific one. To the extent that this is so, then these people are working against God and his will. Some of them at least are doing so for the 'kicks' of pulling people down. It has often been the case down through the ages that people who take God and good seriously are made fun of and pulled down by those who refuse to take their God-given role.

So most CCDrs should not be accorded serious attention, however plausible their arguments seem. Do we not have a responsibility to work with the best knowledge that we have? The greenhouse effect, that an increase in 'climate change' gases traps more of the sun's heat, is from a basic law of physics; those who deny it would have to offer other laws of physics to overcome it; they don't.

The Examples

Example 1. Christopher Booker: Daily Telegraph, U.K., Saturday, September 12th 2009

Most of Christopher Booker's writings seem like this: citing what appear to be facts, but are not relevant, making unwarranted comparisons, sneering, trying to smear by association, being cavalier with data and sources, and being hypocritical.

I know some of the people in the climate change camp, such as Sir John Houghton, and find him a good, cautious scientist, willing to admit where he is wrong, and a serious follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. I trust him rather than Booker.

Example 2. Nigel Lawson's Book

Nigel Lawson, once UK Chancellor under Margaret Thatcher, published An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming in 2008.

Example 3. Roger Helmer, MEP

Helmer's 'Paper'

• "The modest climate change we observe today is entirely consistent with well-established, long-term, natural climate cycles."
• "Without radical changes to energy policy Britain will face a disastrous energy supply position by the middle of the next decade with power cuts, rolling blackouts and three-day weeks ­ perhaps for an extended period."

OK, I thought, I don't necessarily agree with the assumption about what is 'normal' underlying the second, but I do look forward to finding out his arguments underlying the first. As mentioned above, I am looking for *good* climate-sceptic arguments that I can really check out.

But then I read: "I will argue that our misplaced focus on the chimera of climate change is ...". 'Chimera' is not the kind of word to put in a 'paper', but is the kind of word that goes into a polemical tract. Uh-oh!, I thought. Maybe a slip, and it'll still be a useful paper. But then a few lines later I found "hubristic objective" - hubristic is a laden, emotive word that one uses in verbal battle, not in good argument.

So, it is not a paper as I, well-versed in academic thought, understand it. However, it might still provide some useful critical material. Here is what I found, section by section.

The EU: Fully paid-up Climate Alarmists

Climate change is not science. It is our new 21st century religion.

My comment: Religion is natural to humankind. If we believe something, we are committed and are passionate. For example to our football team. For example, Helmer to his climate change skepticism (from a quotation he cites at the start of his paper, he sees himself in the role of a bulldog). Some committed people make rash, unwise claims and threats - both climate change people and climate change deniers - and it is these to which Helmer is alluding. But that some followers do this does not prove that the religion is wrong. Helmer himself is almost guilty of "replacing reason with invective", when he dismisses climate responsibility as 'chimera' and those who want to take action as 'hubristic', and his accusation "If you are ... a Friend of the Earth, then your two key (but unstated) objectives are survival and fund-raising." - which is completely untrue of me, a member of Friends of the Earth.

He cites Sir John Houghton in Global Warming, the Complete Briefing (, Cambridge University Press, 1994) as saying "Unless we announce disasters, no one will listen."

My comment: In 1994 that was true: very few opinion formers, media people, top politicians or business leaders would listen to good argument and take responsible action; they would only take notice of disasters. That is the sin of humanity: we refuse to relinquish our power and comfort to assume our God-given responsibility for the rest of creation. So it is not wrong to announce disaster; God's prophets did.

Climate Change Deniers

• "There is a scientific consensus" F
• "Global Warming is happening now" F
• "Climate sceptics are climate criminals" A
• "Every extreme weather event is caused by climate change" S
• "CO2 is a dangerous pollutant" S
• "A warming climate will bring disaster" P
• "Sea Level rise is a major threat" P
• "The Earth's Ice Caps are melting" F
• "Species are driven to extinction by global warming" F/P
• "You (CCDrs) must be in it for the money" A

This list is a mixture of factual statements (F), predictions (P), accusations (A), and straw-man statements (S). While most climate change supporters would agree with F and P, most would not make the accusations A nor the S statements even though a few might have done so. The S statements are straw men. If this were a genuine paper I would have expected the S statements to be missing, recognising they are straw men, and the A statements either missing or at least dealt with as a minor aside. Elsewhere I examine his arguments for the F and P statements, and find most of them flawed and only one contains material that is useful critique.

The IPCC and "Consensus"

The main thrust of this section is to attack and undermmine the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). He tries to do it by smearing its character: "And here is the rub. The IPCC is notorious for the cavalier way in which it dismisses contrary opinions. It has already seen the light. It knows the truth, and has no time for dissent." One example he gives is that the IPCC "persisted in asserting that global warming would increase the incidence of malaria in more northerly latitudes, and refused to listen to Reiter's advice that malaria can exist in cool climates".

My Comment 1: What he says might hold some truth. If it does, then it is sad, because arrogance is usually counter-productive. But often a body seems to be arrogant to trouble-makers who actually offer little value, rather than to true critics. I would want to know more about the dissent. For example, that malaria can exist in cool climates need not be inconsistent with the belief that malaria would increase in northerly latitudes with global warming, so why did Reiter insist that his name was removed from their report?

This section offers a little value by way of warning IPCC against being too arrogant, but I would want to hear IPCC's side first.

Earth's Climate History

The point is different. Where we end up will most likely be greatly affected by the direction in which we aim, and even a slight change of direction of aim can make a huge different to where we end up. This is especially so with a physical system that we cannot control. The climate is such a physical system that we cannot control.

The science

"It woz the Sun wot dun it"

Al Gore's movie: Science fiction?

The sceptics strike back

The Stern Report: Deeply flawed, profoundly misleading

Flawed Policies for Climate Mitigation

Energy security: the major challenge

Nuclear energy: the mainstream, base-load carbon-free energy source

Epilogue: Where do we go from here?

"The back-bone of Britain's energy security policy has to be nuclear and coal. And the sooner the better, or the lights will go out."

My Overview

I wonder whether his selection of the quote from Darwin's Bulldog is significant in indicating how he sees himself? Huxley was wide of the mark, and his view of science and reason as neutral has been discredited. As a philosopher and a scientist myself I know that all science is based on faith, often in the form of beliefs so deeply rooted that we are unaware they are beliefs.

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Helmer's Arguments

Let us examine Helmer's arguments by which he seeks to underming the F and P statements, to see if there is any useful critique of the climate change position. I give two types of comment, first about the argument, then about what Helmer is trying to do and how he is doing it and his attitude; because our new view is concerned with responsibility and attitude, it is the latter comment that is the more important here. Both are in [square brackets], indented.

• "'There is a scientific consensus' No there is not. Hundreds of scientists have signed letters to governments protesting against the distortions of policy and downright waste inherent in climate mitigation policies. Tens of thousands have signed the Oregon Petition ..."

  [Comment 1. Sounds convincing - until you realise the protests are not against the science, but against policy. Scientific consensus about X means that a large majority of the scientific community are satisfied that X is by far the best explanation, that X has been arrived at by sound research methods and has been subjected to good validation processes, and that, while there are many unknowns especially in the detail, they do not undermine the overall thrust of X. X, here, is anthropogenic climate change. That a minority disagree with X does not undermine X. Helmer's 'hundreds' is a minority compared with thousands (he admits later 2,500) who believe X.]

  [Comment 2. Disingenuous: the "tens of thousands" are not all scientists. Hypocrisy: later he excludes 'economists' from the 2,500 who believe climate change, in an attempt to reduce that number, but here is happy to include them when they are on his side.]

• "'Global Warming is happening now' Not so. In fact the hottest year in recent memory was 1998. Since then, average global temperatures have plateaued, and indeed in the last four years have declined. Warmists insist that this is a short term effect of El Niņo. They tend to blame every anomaly on El Niņo."

  [Comment 1. If there is a regular rise and fall, perhaps because of El Niņo, one would expect the fall to be as large and about as fast as the rise, and get down to the earlier level. But the current plateauing is much less than the rise in 1980s, 1990s. Maybe it will get fasta in next few years (let's see) but if not, then this strongly suggests there is an underlying rise throughout; El Niņo tends to occur every 20 or 30 years.]

  [Comment 2. Hypocrisy? During the period (1980s, 1990s) when world temperatures were rising it was the CCDrs who appealed to El Niņo.]

• "'A warming climate will bring disaster' ... We are a very adaptable species. We should recall that rich Americans from New England frequently choose to retire to Florida. They are opting for an increase in mean temperatures of around 10ēC, because they prefer the warmth and the sunshine. Warming is not all bad."

  [Comment 1. As with Nigel Lawson, he is forgetting that increase in temperature does not just make us warmer but involves more kinetic energy in the atmosphere: more storms and more extremes. Also, the rise we are concerned with is the global average; regional variations will be much larger, disrupting agricultural patterns. But the worst of his argument is that the rich might adapt easily, whereas the poor of the world cannot. Most of the damage will fall on the poor, while the rich in cold climes will enjoy and benefit from the warming.]

  [Comment 2. His "unconcern for the poor" is notable. It is "affluence, arrogance, unconcern for the poor" that, God told the prophet Ezekiel (16:49), was the reason why the city of Sodom was destroyed.]

• "'Sea Level rise is a major threat' ... It is no such thing. ... estimates for 21st Century sea level rise ... currently range from 7 to 23 inches (compared to the current average of around six inches per century). But actual studies of sea level rise show no change in the historic rate15. Sea levels rose quite rapidly ten thousand years ago, with ice melt as the current interglacial got underway, and the rate has slowed since. There are computer projections of an increased rate, but no actual measurements to support them."

  [Comment 1. I'm not sure he is correct in his facts. The figure I have heard is for a metre rise - but I must check; this is perhaps one useful piece of critique. However, the main problem is not just that the average sea level rises some inches, but - because the sea is an active surface - that this will mean more violent storms destroying more homes and communities especially among the poor of the world.]

  [Comment 2. Again his "unconcern for the poor" is striking.]

• "'The Earth's Ice Caps are melting' " [My copy of his report is faulty at this point, so I cannot comment yet.]

• "'Species are driven to extinction by global warming' It's worth recalling that every species alive today survived both the Roman Optimum and the Mediæval Warm Period, when temperatures were warmer than today's. Many extant species survived the previous interglacial around 120,000 years ago ... We can't afford to be complacent. There is no doubt that a major extinction event is taking place in our times, and that it is largely driven by human activity ­ but not by climate change."

  [Comment 1a. He misses the point: It is not that the species today survived; of course they did, or they would not be here! The point is about species that did *not* survive, and will not survive. Comment 1b. However he is correct about there being other causes of extinction, but CC will make it worse by exacerbating habitat loss. As far as I know, the main contributor to extinctions is other things, such as forest clearance, which is also a contributor to climate change.]

  [Comment 2. From a new view perspective, human beings should not cause any extinction, by whatever means.]

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On Paradigm Shifts and Dissenters

Paradigms are ways of seeing the field one is studying. The notion of paradigm shift was brought to our attention main by Kuhn, who gave examples from the history of science. Most sciences gave as examples proceed for a period under the guidance of one paradigm, and knowledge is built up by that scientific community incrementally, but after a while it becomes apparent that that paradigm (way of seeing things) is 'not quite right', and eventually the not-rightness is so large that someone (a radical thinker) proposes a new paradigm. That then becomes the established paradigm in its turn.

But the idea that science moves forward only by the action of anti-establishment people is not the whole picture. Real radical thought is not really useful until shorn of its religious refusals-to-believe. Real radical thought embraces the previous thought (that went on under the previous paradigm) as a poorer understanding rather than a false understanding, and is merciful in its attitude towards it.

In another context, CS Lewis gave the example of a child drawing a circle, all wobbly, and then seeing a (near-)perfect circle and acknowledging that this is what he was aiming for all along. The perfect (in the sense in Hebrews of being complete) is not hostile to the imperfect/incomplete, but embraces it and values it, and even is thankful to it as helping humanity move towards the more complete. The new paradigm does not usually emerge without the period of 'establishment' growth of knowledge.

True radical science works by finding a different way of seeing things, not by just negating and casting doubt on elements of established beliefs. In negating and casting doubt on elements of established beliefs about climate change, the climate sceptics are not offering a new way of seeing things. However, sceptics do have a role, a pre-paradigmatic one, in that they can expose some of the weaknesses of the established view and so they *might* thereby open the way for the true radicals to gain acceptance for their new ways of seeing things.

I say 'might' because sceptics are only effective in this role if they are not hostile to the established view, but rather treat it with respect and love, a love that is sad that it has found a weakness. It reminds me of God's attitude, "who desires not the death of the sinner but that he turn from his wickedness and live." Unfortunately, all the climate sceptics I have read so far are hostile, and desire the 'death' of climate change responsibility rather than its healing. They hate it rather than love it. That is one major reason why I have yet to find a climate sceptic who is useful.

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This page, URL= "http://abxn.org/nv/anti-cc.html", is part of the on-going work in developing a 'New View' in theology and practice that is appropriate to the days that are coming upon us. Comments, queries welcome by emailing

       

Compiled by Andrew Basden as part of his reflections from a Christian perspective. Copyright (c) Andrew Basden to latest date below, but you may use this material for almost any purpose, but subject to certain conditions.

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Created: Last updated: Created: 1 November 2009. Last updated: 5 November 2009 invitation, comedians. 14 November 2009 simplified; comedians moved to new page. 26 September 2024 canon, bgc; new .end,.nav.